want of
funds. His only revenue was the amount of black mail which he was able to
levy upon the inhabitants of the province. He repeated his determination
to treat them all as enemies, unless they furnished him with the means of
expelling their tyrants from the country. He obtained small sums in this
manner from time to time. The inhabitants were favorably disposed, but
they were timid and despairing. They saw no clear way towards the
accomplishment of the result concerning which Louis was so confident.
They knew that the terrible Alva was already on his way. They felt sure
of being pillaged by both parties, and of being hanged as rebels,
besides, as soon as the Governor-general should make his appearance.

Louis had, however, issued two formal proclamations for two especial
contributions. In these documents he had succinctly explained that the
houses of all recusants should be forthwith burned about their ears, and
in consequence of these peremptory measures, he had obtained some ten
thousand florins. Alva ordered counter-proclamations to be affixed to
church doors and other places, forbidding all persons to contribute to
these forced loans of the rebels, on penalty of paying twice as much to
the Spaniards, with arbitrary punishment in addition, after his arrival.
The miserable inhabitants, thus placed between two fires, had nothing for
it but to pay one-half of their property to support the rebellion in the
first place, with the prospect of giving the other half as a subsidy to
tyranny afterwards; while the gibbet stood at the end of the vista to
reward their liberality. Such was the horrible position of the peasantry
in this civil conflict. The weight of guilt thus accumulated upon the
crowned head which conceived, and upon the red right hand which wrought
all this misery, what human scales can measure?

With these precarious means of support, the army of Louis of Nassau, as
may easily be supposed, was anything but docile. After the victory of
Heiliger Lee there had seemed to his German mercenaries a probability of
extensive booty, which grew fainter as the slender fruit of that battle
became daily more apparent. The two abbots of Wittewerum and of Heiliger
Lee, who had followed Aremberg's train in order to be witnesses of his
victory, had been obliged to pay to the actual conqueror a heavy price
for the entertainment to which they had invited themselves, and these
sums, together with the amounts pressed from the rel